The Philadelphia Eagles are no longer green in color
only. In addition to their victories on the field, the team has been
winning big in another arena — the environment.

Fans have seen glimpses of the team's commitment to conservation
in Lincoln Financial Field: the huge signs that advertise
"Renewable Energy!" and urge them to "Score! By unplugging
unused electronics," and the bottle-shaped recycling receptacles
that have popped up amidst the trash cans.

But that's just a small part of the initiative, according to
Christina Lurie, co-owner of the team, and Don Smolenski, the
team's Chief Financial Officer. In an event co-sponsored by the
Environmental Law Project, the Entertainment and Sports Law
Society and the Toll Public Interest Center, Lurie and Smolenski
visited the Law School in October to explain the full scope of
the Philadelphia Eagles's six-year-old "Go Green" environmental
campaign. Today, the Eagles use 100 percent renewable energy —
mainly wind — to power their training facility and stadium, plant
trees to offset the carbon dioxide produced when they travel, conduct
curbside recycling programs within Philadelphia and even
have their own seven-acre forest in Neshaminy State Park.

Achieving these goals has placed the Eagles in an environmental
league of their own — and they didn't come easy, say
Lurie and Smolenski. For one thing, they had to contend with
the common perception that environmental causes and football
don't attract the same fans. Smolenski had to be convinced that
the changes wouldn't financially hurt the company.

"Philosophically, I was already there," added Smolenski.
"But you've gotta balance the business of what you do with any
new initiative."

As it turned out, greening the team was an enormously profitable
enterprise. Over the last five years, the Eagles's energy use
has decreased by 10 million kilowatt-hours. And they've saved
about $4 million by doing so.
Along the way, the company has learned how to weave
environmental responsibility into the normal experience of
a football game. Some changes are almost imperceptible to
game-goers, such as the corn-based plastic beer cups that have
replaced the conventional, petroleum-based plastic cups, or the
collectors who trawl the stands after each game for recyclable
waste before the regular trash sweep. Other changes, however,
required some, uh, trick plays.

"We noticed that it has to be really easy for people to change
their habits," said Lurie. Recycling cans, for instance, can't be
more than twenty feet apart from each other, or else people will
simply throw their cans and bottles into the nearest trash: "If it's
ten extra steps, believe it or not, they won't do it," she laughed.

Penn Law Professor Cary Coglianese asked if environmental
law has driven any of the Go Green campaign. Except for a few
soil tests they were required to perform on the stadium land,
Smolenski replied, there's been no legal impetus to the changes
— the whole effort is just an attempt at positive corporate citizenship.
"It's largely driven by a fundamental sense of what is
good to do," he said.